Death Of The Middle Man

Imagine you are a rich guy, maybe a banker working at an investment house, and your neighborhood starts to have a crime problem. Maybe you get mugged on the way to your car or perhaps you start hearing about break-ins in the area. All of a sudden, your safe world is no longer safe. You think that maybe it is time to hire some private security to enforce the rules, but you find that they do not exist. All of a sudden, your cash is not all that important to maintaining your lifestyle.

That is the position of Western political elites as they come to terms with the reality playing out on the Ukraine battlefront. The West has lots of cash. They can literally create what they need from thin air. Sure, it has created inflation for the Dirt People, but only a sucker cares about them. Ukraine is what matters. Even though Congress is slow walking the next pile of cash, there is still plenty to send Ukraine. The EU and now the U.S. are plotting to “loan” Ukraine the money.

The trouble is dollars and euros are not much use on the battlefield. What Ukraine needs is machines, ammunition for the machines and men to run the machines, but that is something the West is struggling to produce. CNN has a story up that reports the Russians now produce three times the number of artillery shells as America and Europe combined, which is probably an understatement. The production numbers cited are more theoretical than actual for the West.

The industrial aspect of this war has been a topic of discussion around here since the war started, but like the rich guys living in their fantasy world of wealth and access, the political class of the West has not thought about it. Making stuff, inventing stuff and fixing stuff is for the Dirt People. Cloud People need their time and energy to think about new ways to describe the glorious future or turn bits of invented money into more bits of invented money so they can underwrite their lifestyle.

What the war in Ukraine is doing is reminding the world that the strength of a country is not magical numbers in reports that no one reads, but the hard cold reality of making stuff, fixing stuff, and inventing new ways to make and fix stuff. You can probably throw in food production, which is a form of making stuff, but a unique form, along with digging stuff out of the ground, like energy products and minerals. Countries good at these things will be strong countries.

The West no longer does these things. America and Europe still grow lots of food but the war on food production, as part of the Gaia cult, is threatening to kill off whole swaths of farm production. The war on digging up the ground is mostly about aesthetics, as the Cloud People hate seeing people do dirty work like farming or digging minerals out of the ground. Manufacturing employment in the U.S. has dropped by half over the last half century, despite the population growing by a third.

This is why the West is losing this proxy war with Russia. Despite having a far smaller population and smaller GDP, Russia still makes things and has the facilities and work force to make more things. If you can grow your own food in vast excess, supply your own energy needs, plus much more for export and you make things that people around the world want to buy, you are going to be immune from the machinations of the money changers in New York and London.

It goes beyond this though. China is the world’s biggest manufacturer and the world’s biggest consumer market. India is the second largest consumer market, and it is emerging as a manufacturing powerhouse. Russia is now the fifth largest economy in the world, despite the sanctions. What is happening here is the places where things are made and dug out of the ground are getting rich, which means they can also buy things, like the stuff they make for Western markets.

What we are seeing here is the death of the middle-man economy. For the last half century, America has positioned itself to be the money lender, the regulator, and the facilitator of economic activity, rather than the producer. To finance this, much of the manufacturing base was auctioned off and the economy became reliant on the production of credit to the global economy. To a lesser degree, the EU has done the same thing, as the junior partner of the United States.

What the war on Russia is revealing is that in a street fight, the banker has no chance against the guy who works on a factory floor. Sure, the banker has a Brazilian Jujitsu trainer and access to the finest steroids, but the working man knows how to fight and win, so it can never be much of a match. Further, in the contest of countries, it is the rules of the street that matter, not the rules of the boardroom. The competition of nations is always a street fight.

Long ago, the paleos made the point that you cannot have an economy based on everyone doing each other’s laundry. The great transition from an industrial economy to  a service economy was cheered by the Cloud People but people like Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot warned that it was unsustainable. A generation on and the world is learning that those old guys were right. A country that does not make things, fix things, and invent things is no longer a serious country.

Twenty years ago, Yuri Slezkine observed in his book, The Jewish Century, that the American economy had been transformed into one that primarily served the interests of the facilitators and middle-men. Jews, he argued, were unusually skilled at these tasks and that is why they have been so successful. According to the Atlantic, the golden age of American Jews is ending, and probably taking America with it. It turns out that the middle-man economy is not sustainable.


If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!


Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory, so if you are a griller, take you spice business to one of our guys.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.


Burn The Boats

Note: Behind the green door is a post about the Super Tuesday results and a post about my thoughts about moving from Lagos. The Sunday podcast was posted late, as I was tied up on some projects. Subscribe here or here.


One of the things the paleos missed when they began to flesh out managerialism in the last century is how it assumes the qualities of democracy. This is something Robert Dahl picked up in his analysis of American government against the standard of democracy he developed. While the institutions of America were not democratic and could never be democratic, the people in these institutions were motivated by a democratic sense in that they wanted to act according to public will.

This explains, in part, how our institutions have grown increasingly authoritarian over the last three decades, while the people running them have become obsessed with defending what they call “our democracy.” They do not view democracy as a process, but rather as a goal. The truly democratic society is open, and the people freely exchange the right ideas. Defending democracy in this sense means dragging the people to this place, by force if necessary.

This democratic sensibility within democracy is important in understanding the reckless behavior of the people running the institutions. If one were to pick a single word to describe the cause of the current crisis it would be “reckless”. Whether it is reckless foreign policy adventures or poorly conceived domestic fads, the ruling class seems to take pleasure in reckless projects. They operate like gamblers with unlimited credit that they assume will be repaid by others.

The Ukraine war is the latest example. When the Russians threatened war, it was over the Minsk agreements not having been followed. They had a specific set of claims against Ukraine, and they wanted help from the West to enforce those claims, but instead they got bellicose threats from Washington. In retrospect, we now know that the West wanted war with Russia. Deliberately picking a fight with the world’s biggest nuclear power is about as reckless as it gets.

For two years the West has steadfastly refused to have any dealings with the Russians, instead demanding total surrender. Every few months the West seeks some new “red line” to cross, hoping to provoke the Russians. Now the French are recruiting the micronations of NATO to send troops into Ukraine. The whole point of this is to bait the Russians into responding in a way that will then let NATO pretend they are being attacked by Russia so they can invoke Article 5.

Project Ukraine is a pointless and risky adventure, but even as the Russians gain the upper hand, the Western managerial elite remains addicted to it. Like drug addicts, they crave only the next hit of foolish risk in this thing. So much so that they look for new ways to make it so they cannot change course. There is a burn the boats mentality to this project, where they seek out policies that further commit the West to the project in such a way that no one can apply the brakes.

This burn the boats mentality is everywhere. The immigration crisis is not simply about border management, something that could be fixed. It is aimed at making it a permanent crisis, a permanent project for the managerial class. Tens of millions of illegals now roam the countryside, raping and killing Americans. Even if a new president wants to fix the problem, he will still be left with the tens of millions of criminal aliens unleashed on the cities and towns of America.

One of the defenses of aristocratic rule is that it is naturally cautious. The king has an investment in his country and people in that he directly benefits from them. Who he is as a king depends upon the health and welfare of the people and the land on which they live, so he is not going to be quick to risk either of those for novelty. In fact, he is going to be cautious of change, especially in domestic affairs, because he has everything to lose and little to gain.

This is not true in democratic systems where the rulers have no investment at all, as they can be replaced at the next election. Hans Hermann-Hoppe noted that in democratic systems, the people holding office often despise the office they hold, as they gained it only as a steppingstone toward some other goal. The people have nothing but their vote, so they are willing to take great risks. The result is a system that is willing to take enormous risk for theoretical and ephemeral gains.

America is not a democracy, but a sense of democracy is there in the institutions controlled by the managerial class. What we have is a managerial polyarchy, where the elites use the institutions to chase the mirage of the democratic society. Because the goal is not real, it is maximally alluring. This is why the elites are willing to trample the democratic process to defend “our democracy.” What they are defending is not a real thing but the imagined end point of history.

It is that democratic spirit that makes them so risk happy. This burn the boats approach to public policy comes from the sense that this condition of society is temporary and therefore the positions held by the elite are temporary. In a real sense, those positions are temporary, as all managers keep their resume up to date for a reason. Throw in the fact that failure never comes with consequences and the result is a ruling elite that operates like a desperate gambler looking for a score.

The great lesson in democratic risk taking is Athens in the Peloponnesian War where the Athenians were determined to spark war with Sparta. It was the Athenian decision to roll the dice on an invasion of Syracuse that led not only to the end of the war but the destruction of Athens. Given the similarity between America and Athens, it is fair to assume the same fate awaits the American empire. Democratic empire will turn out to be a suicide pact crafted by people addicted to risk taking.


If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!


Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory, so if you are a griller, take you spice business to one of our guys.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.


Oriental Managerialism

Saving face is a phrase we tend to associate with oriental cultures, but it is an expression used in the West. The idea is that one wants to avoid being publicly disrespected in order to maintain your dignity. This means either doing something in response to a slight or committing a ritual act when you fail. Famously, committing suicide is an act of saving face in order to avoid the shame of public humiliation for having failed in your duties.

Even though the concept is oriental it is not entirely alien to the West. In fact, face saving has become a cultural aspect of the managerial elite. We just saw this with Victoria Nuland resigning her post. She had failed to destroy the ancient enemy of her people, so she was allowed to resign and save face. If she had been fired, it would be a public acknowledgment that she had failed. Her standing and that of her cult would be lowered as a result, so she was allowed to save face and quit.

This idea of face saving is not entirely alien to the West, but it is not a natural thing the way we see it practiced by our elites. Western societies are moral societies, held together as much by a set of agreed upon codes, passed down from one generation to the next. Publicly shaming someone for his failure to live up to the prevailing moral code is part of reinforcing that code. Letting someone save face undermines this so it is not natural in Western societies. We punish the sinner.

This oriental idea of face saving is behind the phenomenon of failing up which has come to define the modern managerial class. Someone like Victoria Nuland, for example, has been a failure at every stop in her career, but at every stop she has been allowed to save face and move to some new position. You can be sure she will assume a spot at a think tank or university. If Trump wins in November, she will get a media gig to criticize his handling of Russia.

The norm for Western society, with regards to someone like Nuland, is she would have been flushed out of the system as a warning to others. Go back far enough and she may have been killed or exiled. Maybe after she had demonstrated enough contrition she would be rehabilitated to a limited degree. That would include publicly admitting to and accepting that she was a failure. This is now alien to the managerial elite, even though it remains the norm with the Dirt People.

This idea of face saving is behind the cancel culture stuff that soon became a pogrom against normal people who held normal opinions. For our elites, simply being exposed as having broken the new rules was enough to compel a self-imposed exile of some sort, in order to save face. The accused was allowed to depart and save face, without suffering more than a minor loss of social standing. This offered the hope of rehabilitation once everyone forgot about it.

Since this is alien to normal people, it did not work this way so tougher measures were rolled out to punish the hooligans and running dog obstructionists. Banning people from Twitter, for example, was viewed by the people we call the left as an extreme punishment, because the victim lost face. The fact that the victim just respawned as a new character was seen as proof of their evil, because good people wish to avoid losing face and would have accepted their punishment.

People have noted that the response of the West to the Ukraine war is a globalized version of the cancel culture and censorship pogroms. Most of what Western leaders did over the last two years was about “isolating” Putin. It was as if they thought excluding him from the cool kid table would humiliate him to the point where he would either resign or be deposed. It never occurred to them that he and his government did not understand what any of this meant.

The question is why has face saving crowded out the old, natural way of policing the ranks of the elites? Part of it, obviously, is the way in which the managerial elite now see themselves individually and as a group. Many still see themselves as a minority and they brought the minority viewpoint into the elite. Minorities are always aware of their standing with regard to the majority, so saving face is important. Many originate from face saving societies, so this comes naturally.

There is also the bourgeoise nature of the elites. Our ruling class is not filled with an aristocratic sense of position. Instead, they view themselves as having scored the better on the test, relative to others. In other words, they are a system dependent elite, while an aristocracy is an independent elite. The former are full of angst about their position in the system, so they obsess over it. The latter sees the system as an expression of their natural position atop their society.

Like all middle-class people, our bourgeoise managerial elite is riddled with self-doubt about their standing. As you see in any middle-class suburb, the primary obsession is with noticing what everyone else is doing in order to make sure you are seen as part of what everyone else is doing. Conformity is a defining feature of bourgeoise culture and is thus the defining feature of the managerial elite. The so-called “Karen culture” is a natural product of an elite harvested from the middle-class.

The formation of a middle-class is most likely a lagging indicator. The independent farmer is something that arises late in an agrarian society. The urban middle-class was a late development in the industrial age. Our bourgeoise managerial elite with its oriental outlook probably signals a late stage of managerialism. The committee mentality and face saving are all part of a general decline in competence, which also suggests we are in the late stages of managerialism.


If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!


Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory, so if you are a griller, take you spice business to one of our guys.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.


The God Of The Clouds

One of the things about the current age that gets little attention is the contradiction we see every day in the political system. On the one hand, most people think the political system is captured by minority interests like corporations, the military industrial complex, ideological fanatics and so on. At the same time, the political class puts an enormous amount of time and energy into convincing the public. If public opinion plays little role in policy, why do the politicians care what we think?

First off, there is the question of whether public opinion matters. Paradoxically, many of the people who claim government is controlled by minority interests put a lot of time into convincing people of this theory. They also make claims about the nature of the minority interests that are absurd. For example, white men are claimed to have special access to power, when this is clearly not true. For this class of critic, “minority interests” are whatever bogeyman haunts their fevered dreams of utopia.

Ten years ago there was a big study to determine if public opinion matters when it comes to the making of public policy. By the standards of social science, the data set was massive and comprehensive. The result was that economic elites control public policy, not majority will. If rich people want something from government, they tend to get it barring overwhelming public opposition. If the people want something but rich people oppose it, then the politicians are happy to ignore the people.

To the realists, this makes perfect sense. In every area of life, rich people have far more influence than regular people. This has been true since the first guy drew a line around some land and declared sole ownership of it. Wealth is power because it can be used to buy influence, but also because people tend to respect money. It is a sign that the person is successful and therefore has qualities we should respect. Even the most radical leftists respects rich people. Just as George Soros.

This answers the question as to who really controls the political system in the general sense, but it does not cover everything. Do the economic elites of the West want a long war in Ukraine? Maybe in the United States the war profiteers see it as a good thing, but European industry has been getting killed by the war. Similarly, environmentalism benefits some profiteers, like Elon Musk, but it harms many others. Clearly, rich people can be cajoled into supporting things that harm their interests.

That starts to get at the question as to why the ruling class puts so much time and effort into tricking the public. If you look at lists of the richest people, the one thing lacking in the vast display of wealth is diversity of opinion. You do not find immigration opponents, for example, in the Fortune 1000. There are no zealous Christian Nationalist or even serious opponents of Zionism. There are degrees of enthusiasm for the latest thing among the elites, but everyone supports the latest thing.

No one, not even the sociopaths who populate the economic elite, wants to think of themselves as the bad guy. They may embrace a mock version of being the devilish figure in the drama of life, but no one thinks of himself as the devil. No matter your station in life, you are the hero of your story. What supports this is others taking your side in some moral cause. It is why people like sympathy and forgiveness when they do something stupid or get harmed. It means they are the good guy.

The reason our elites chant about democracy so much now is they not only believe what they are saying, but they have to believe what they are saying. In order for them to maintain their sense of being the hero, they need some moral authority to bestow upon them the blessings that are reserved for the righteous. The support of their fellow elites is not enough. In this age, the righteous have the support of the masses, so that is why our elites invest so much in winning public approval.

The god of democracy is not the god of the people. It is a process that turns the people into a fickle god that must be cajoled and bullied in order to give its blessing. In order for our rulers to see themselves as heroically leading mankind to the next phase of human existence, they need the people to be cheering them. Like the deranged rulers of Rome who staged games to win public acclaim, our rulers stage mass media events, public festivals like elections and public relations campaigns.

In a way, our rulers are acting the same way as the people who go door to door handing out information about their cult. On the one hand, these people think they are giving away something beneficial. They are offering people a way into their cult. On the other hand, they are looking for confirmation. If even a few people show some interest, it confirms to them that their beliefs have some merit. The conversion process in all religions is for the benefit of the converted.

Unlike a religious cult, our rulers resent this relationship. It is a weird aspect of the morality of democracy that it corrupts the soul of the believer. They begin to hate the god they are forced to worship. Our elites hate the marketplace, whether it is the economic market or the political one. It is why they seek monopoly. If they can so dominate the market that they always get majority support, they have tamed their god into always being a loving and approving god.

Of course, nature abhors a monopoly, so that means our elites are always in a contest with the Old Scratch of democracy, which is dissent. As long as there is one person out there who disagrees it remains possible that the opinion of the elites is invalid or even immoral, despite the level of support. Much of the venom directed at the public by our elites is the result of this reality. Final confirmation can only come when the final dissident is wiped from the scene.

Hans-Hermann Hoppe famously picked “Democracy: The God That Failed” for the title of his book promoting private government. It contains many of the themes in this post, but it misses one essential point. Democracy is not a god that fails the people or even society, but a god that can never satisfy the ruling elite. Every ruling needs a god, as they must stand on a moral framework. All societies start from a moral basis and it must feel permanent. Democracy is simply too fickle for the task.

In the end, that is why our rulers and their servants in politics and the media so frantically chase after public opinion. It is why vast amounts of capital are invested into tricking the people. Like the rabbis looking for loopholes in the Talmud, our rulers are always looking for some way to get justification from the public for their actions and their position, but they always find dissidents. For them, democracy is a god that always brings the devil with him to undermine their efforts.


Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory, so if you are a griller, take you spice business to one of our guys.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.


The Losers Morality

Note To SubscribeStar Users: I was told that their payment processor made some changes, so that screwed up some of the renewals. The usual suspects continue to harass credit card processors who do business with normal people. It is a hassle, for sure, but a reality of life these days.


Note: For those looking for a good book to read, check out this new novel Faction: With the Crusaders, which is the follow on of the writer’s first novel called Faction.


On Sunday, a US Air Force member named Aaron Bushnell set himself on fire outside the Israel embassy to protest the war in Gaza. This being the modern age, he live steamed the act on Twitch. According to the BBC, he had e-mailed a message to the Antifa media operators with whom he was associated. “Today, I am planning to engage in an extreme act of protest against the genocide of the Palestinian people,” the email read, warning it would be “highly disturbing”.

The video is disturbing for a number of reasons, the most obvious of which it shows a man burning to death, which is one of the most horrific ways to die. It also shows uniformed police doing nothing but pointing their guns at the man as he burned to death, because that is the only thing they know how to do now. Finally, someone rushed up with a fire extinguisher to put out the flames, but the cops still stood there ready to shoot the poor man if they could find a reason to do it.

The point of this act was to get attention to the cause, which is the Israeli war on the Palestinian settlements in Gaza. Antifa, with whom Mr. Bushnell was associated, is anti-Israel, so they have taken up the cause of Gaza. Despite claiming to be antifascist, the anarchist subculture is surprisingly antisemitic, something that gets left out of the reporting by the media. It is a good example of how the Washington regime will align with anyone, no matter how bizarre, if it suits their needs.

The logic behind this protest is that it so shocks the sensibilities that no one can ignore it, thus attention is brought to the cause. There is no disputing this. Before Aaron Bushnell self-immolated, no one other than his family and friends had any reason to know his name, but now he is global news. To a lesser degree, his reasons for doing what he did are also global news. For the anti-Israel movement around the world, Aaron Bushnell is now a martyr and hero for the cause.

That is where things get complicated. For those already in the pro-Gaza camp, Mr. Bushnell’s actions are noble because they elicit pity. Michael Tracy tried unsuccessfully to make this point on Twitter. You are supposed to see the act, feel pity for the man suffering and then think about his reasoning. Presumably, once you understand his reasoning, you will not only embrace his reasoning, but embrace the moral claims that he is making with regards to Israel.

Of course, you could just as easily look at his act, feel pity for the man and then conclude he must be insane. After all, reason tells us that all living creators seek to preserve their lives by any means necessary. This we can observe in nature and within ourselves as living things. Therefore, a human seeking to die is probably suffering from mental defect and needs protection from himself. Perhaps his cause is just as crazy as the man killing himself in the name of the cause.

There is something else. Why should the moral claims of a loser, a failure, a maniac, have greater appeal than the moral claims of the people supporting the stronger party in the Gaza conflict? In other words, why do the losers have a claim on our sympathy rather than the winners? Why should our sympathy have any role in determining the morality of the two parties in the conflict? Why are both sides appealing to our pity and sympathy rather than some other emotion?

In no other area of life is this logic applied. In a war the winners are celebrated and the losers are punished, usually by their own people. When the Ukraine army falls apart, the political leaders of Ukraine will flee for their lives. The leaders of NATO countries will be mocked and scorned by their own people. We see the same in sports competition, where the winners are feted and the losers and excoriated. Why in this case should the morality be turned on its head?

The truth is, it is not turned on its head. The reason this sort of protest, and most protests, fail to sway the public is they appeal to a loser’s morality. The protestors are saying, in effect, that they cannot win the debate with the public and they cannot win the argument with the rulers. They are powerless, so no one addresses their concerns, which leaves them with nothing by an appeal to your sympathy. This always fails as people naturally support the winner and reject the loser.

This is why most of the commentary online about the self-immolation of Aaron Bushnell was mocking and joking. Even in that Michael Tracey thread the replies are sarcastic, despite his obvious appeal to pity. It turns out that appeals to pity only work on those who see themselves as pitiful. To everyone else, they just reinforce the notion that the losers deserve to lose, which is why they act like losers. For most people, Bushnell’s act proves his cause is not worth considering.

It is an important point about politics. Democratic politics are theater and self-pity makes for bad box office. Successful political movements project strength and confidence, not weakness and self-pity. That means all public displays, including protests, should project strength and confidence. Aaron Bushnell would have served his cause better if he went about punching Israelis in the nose. At least then he would have been seen as a threat and people will respect a man who is a threat.


If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!


Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory, so if you are a griller, take you spice business to one of our guys.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.


Waiting Out The Weirdness

Note: The site performance should be better today. Last night I drained the fluids and replaced the filters. The canoodling valve was stuck. I cleaned it up and recalibrated it, so things should be working fine now.


There is an old fable about how if you throw a frog into boiling water he will immediately leap out of the pot, but if you put him in room temperature water and slowly bring the heat up to boiling, he will not notice. The central claim about frogs is false, but the point of the fable is that humans often do not notice gradual change, even when the results of that change are bizarre or dangerous. Often this point is made to explain some new weirdness that people did not see coming.

This is not an expression we see used much anymore, mostly because this age has become so bizarre that the frog metaphor no longer works. Everyday some new weirdness pops from nowhere, as if the people running the simulation wanted to see what would happen if you threw a frog into boiling water. Finding the idea too cruel, they instead hurl modern Americans into a world where men in dresses demand you use their made-up pronouns and pretend they are a third sex.

The weirdness yesterday was the release of Google’s new image AI tool that was programmed to never create images of white people. The director of the project had to go to the media and lie about it being a mistake after people got the thing to create images of Nazis that were Asian and African. It was fine when it was race-swapping people from medieval Western history, but making Nazis anything other than white is a violation of the invisible law of this age.

The salient point here is it was done on purpose. Thirty years ago, it was impossible to imagine people so deranged and degenerate gaining control of the culture and then using their power to create bizarre images of the past. This is not something that you can say happened gradually then all of a sudden. Sure, it fits a general pattern of ethnic hatred, but the weirdness of it falls outside of even the most cynical expectations, despite being part of a growing pattern.

People often want to think their age is a wacky time compared to prior ages, but objectively the culture tends to move slowly. Maybe there are fits of upheaval, like the civil rights movement in the middle of the last century, but even that was the climax of a process that started generations earlier. You could draw a line from Gettysburg to white children being marched at gun point into black schools. You cannot draw a line from the present black Nazi AI to anything in the past.

If you are middle-aged or older, this election is shaping up to be so outside of anything you have experienced that space aliens could staging it. For decades both sides of the political consensus warned about authoritarianism. All of a sudden, both sides are perfectly fine with it. One side wants to round up dissidents and put them in jail while the other side pretends it is not happening. Notice that no senior Republicans have had much to say about the Trump case in New York.

Of course, the election itself is from bizzarro world. Joe Biden is so feeble and mentally infirmed that he was declared mentally unfit to stand trial, but he can possess the nuclear football and run for reelection. Donald Trump, a man known to us for his outlandish real estate mogul lifestyle and television ventures has transformed in the Gracchi brothers and Lucius Junius Brutus. An entertainment personality has now become the most courageous man in American politics.

It is impossible to overstate the weirdness of this, but it is not the weirdest thing about the coming presidential election. In all probability, the states that were fortified for democracy in 2020 will be fortified for democracy in 2024. The result will be four more years of man who is unable to count to four. Go back to 1984 and tell people Joe Biden will be alive in 2024 and they would be shocked. Tell them he will be president and they would laugh in your face.

The thing is though, this is not the weirdest thing happening right now. Here is a story about parents in Indiana who had their child snatched from them by the state because they did not subscribe the pronoun business. Not long-ago, people who even the most cynical thought were exaggerating warned about this stuff. “They are coming from your kids” was over-the-top rhetoric. Today is just a thing that no one finds all that shocking as it is just another deranged item on the list.

Again, it all feels like the people running the simulation are in a competition to see who can produce the most insane thing to foist upon us. It is not entirely wrong as all of this originates from the people who control the centers of cultural power. The people running the Google AI platform deliberately chose to race swap all the images and prevent any images of white people. The people stealing children in the name of pronouns know what they are doing. The question is why?

That is the weirdest part of this age. There is no good answer for why the people in charge are doing these things. You can say money and power, but they have all the money and power. People who blame it on money and power are simply trying not to think about it too much. You cannot blame them. The other answers can get you hurled into the void as a heretic or cast you as some sort of nutter. We are all left to hope the fever breaks, even though it clearly it is not breaking.

In the end, everyone is left to wait it out, like a bad storm. Instead of huddling in the basement, hoping the house does not come free of the foundation, most people do their best to avert their eyes. Maybe that is the appeal of VR goggles. You can venture into the world and not see the weirdness. You will not see the bus coming at you, but at least the end will be quick and free of bearded men in frocks, but how long before the weirdness is injected into that realm?

The only good news in all of this is that reality is the thing that does not go away when you stop believing in it. No matter how infuriating or terrifying things get, reality will not yield to the dreams of the crazies. This was the lesson of the French revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution, and every ideological movement. It will be the lesson of whatever this cultural revolution is called when it finally ends. The other lesson is the crazies always meet a fate worse than they inflict on their victims.


If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!


Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory, so if you are a griller, take you spice business to one of our guys.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.


Gradually, Then Suddenly

The Hemingway line about bankruptcy happening gradually then suddenly is a great line because it applies to many things. The suddenly part is what everyone can see and what everyone remembers. It is the gradually part that is overlooked. It is the important part of the dynamic because it explains why the event occurred. Landslides are not random events but the accumulation of many small, unobserved events that eventually reach a tipping point and we get the big event.

That is something to keep in mind as the military struggles to both meet its recruitment numbers and maintain the human capital needed for its operations. Fifty years ago, after the Vietnam war, the military put an emphasis on quality over quantity in both its arms and the men using those arms. The lesson of the Vietnam and post-Vietnam era, the so-called Stripes period, was that the modern military needed to be smarter, relying on intelligence rather than just brute force.

There is a lot more to the renaissance of the American military that began fifty years ago, but the salient factor today is the emphasis on intelligence. The reason for that is the military is suffering from a brain-drain. The overall intelligence of the military is in decline and it is most acute among the officer class. According to that linked report from National Defense Press, “Two-thirds of the new officers commissioned in 2014 would be in the bottom one-third of the class of 1980.”

As one would expect in this age of censorship, certain factors are left out of the discussion, but they hover over it like a fog. In fact, this reality hangs over everything in American society, despite the rules against acknowledging it. The highly complex machine that is the modern high tech American society is in a race. Will the robots reach the point where they can run things for us before the general intelligence of the population declines below a sustainable threshold?

Of course, a big driver is simply declining intelligence. All the research tells us that intelligence among European people has been in decline for a long time. The debate is how long it has been happening and why. The generally accepted estimate is that European people are losing one point per generation at the minimum. That study about the modern officer class suggests the decline is much more rapid, but that does not adjust for demographic factors.

Talk to anyone willing to be honest about the state of the American military and they will tell you that it would not fare well in a war against a peer. This is a lesson of the Ukraine war that is being ignored by the best people. Not only is this war more violent than anything the American military has experienced in fifty years, it is making demands on the officer class that the American military cannot meet. The American planned offensive last summer is a case in point. It was a disaster.

There is another factor to all of this, the thing that hangs over everything like a fog, and that is the thing no one is supposed to mention, which is demographics. That linked report mentions the collapse in the value of a college diploma, but it skips over why this has happened, which is the important bit. In response to demographic change and demographic reality, the modern levelers are forced to destroy the credentialing system so that it is no longer a measure of anything useful.

The military is finding out what every employer in American already knows and that is a college diploma is meaningless. In fact, it could be an indicator that the person will be a nuisance in the work place, making demands around social causes. The reason for this is the college system is more concerned with training young people for those causes than for preparing them to be productive citizens in the practical economy. College is no longer a reliable type of intelligence test.

Another aspect of the demographic crisis is the white out. This is the evolving process whereby white Americans exit the system by choice. The military, for example, is struggling to recruit white people, especially white men. The main reason for this is the social causes launched by the levelers inside the military to fix the reality of race within the military and make it a new model army for society. The immediate consequence of this is the military is getting dumber at a faster rate.

What is happening is white people are voting with their feet. Anyone who has seen a once popular restaurant or entertainment area go bust can understand what is happening across American society. It declines a little here and a little there without much notice, then all of a sudden everyone notices. In the case of a restaurant, this means the regulars stop being regular. In the case of an entertainment district, it often becomes a free fire zone for local youth.

To bring us back to that Hemingway line, in various areas we are about to see the suddenly part of the process. The military is a good example. The antiwhite pogroms launched inside the military under Biden were a long time in the making. Gradually they got going and then suddenly they were everywhere. The response from white people was to gradually avoid the military and now suddenly it is a thing. This is a pattern turning up all over American society.

The salient point here is that the cracks we see opening up in American society are the consequence of long processes. The levelers have been gnawing away at the support ropes for a long time. These problems that seem to have suddenly appeared, like the military intelligence crisis or the corruption of the court system are the result of decades of the gradual undermining of standards. Like bankruptcy, societal collapse happens gradually and then all of a sudden.


If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!


Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory, so if you are a griller, take you spice business to one of our guys.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.


A Price For Everything

Note: Behind the green door is a post about being a jerk, old people sniffing deli meat at the grocery story and the Sunday podcast. Subscribe here or here.


A tenet of the old right was that some things are too important to a society to be subjected to the crucible of reason. Traditions, for example, not only bind people to their ancestors, but to one another in the shared understanding of the past. Treating traditions as mere superstition inevitably leads to their abandonment and the loss of their associated social capital. A society without tradition and history is a temporary, ad hoc collection of deracinated individuals.

Reason is not just questioning and demanding proof. The marketplace is a manifestation of reason in the exchange of goods and services. Sellers compete with one another to attract buyers. Buyers compete with one another through the mechanism of price in order to determine the best good or service. Reason states that if you have a competitive and open market, you end up with the best products and services winning over those of lesser quality or higher price.

The old right would agree to the theory behind open market economies but point out that some things are too important to subject to the market. The moral claims of a society, for example, should not be up for bid. The marketplace would no doubt decide that slavery in certain areas is the superior option, as it has for all of human history, but we have decided that owning other humans is immoral. Therefore, we do not make this moral claim subject to the crucible of the marketplace.

We are getting a real-world glimpse of this with regards to the war in Ukraine which the Western managerial elite insist is a moral crusade. Helping Ukraine, they say, is proof that we worship the god called democracy. The Munich Security Conference just ended and speaker after speaker insisted that the god of democracy demands we empty our wallets to help Ukraine. The Danish prime minister went so far as to say that the West must give all of its weapons to Ukraine.

No one really knows, because the cause is too important to waste time on accounting, but the West has supplied Ukraine with weapons and money in amounts many times more than Russia is committing to the war. Hundreds of billions have been given to Ukraine with hundreds more lent though various contrivances. The sorts of people who perform at events like the Munich Security Conference are fond of talking about how the arsenal of democracy is going to save Ukraine.

The trouble is the weapons supplied to Ukraine have not made much of a difference and in many cases have been worthless. French supplied armored vehicles are nothing more than expensive death traps. British Challenger tanks are great on the parade route but unsuitable for actual combat. The German Leopard tanks were sitting ducks against Russian artillery in the summer offensive. Despite the economic advantages, Western weapons have not made much of a difference.

The reason gets back to the tenet of the old right. There is a story in the German tabloid Bild that takes a look at how Germany is supplying armored vehicles. Instead of producing or selecting vehicles best suited for the war, it is an elaborate financial scam that profits the arms dealers and their foreign suppliers but results in expensive and poorly suited vehicles to Ukraine. The German taxpayer is paying three- and four-times retail for equipment that is useless in the war.

To give some perspective, the Russians probably spend the equivalent of one hundred thousand dollars for an armored vehicle. The Germans are paying six hundred thousand dollars, but for the wrong sort of vehicle. This is a pattern that repeats across the Western supply chain to Ukraine. Either suppliers see a chance to unload useless junk at inflated prices or their top-line equipment, in the case of Western tanks, is proving to be ill-suited for the actual fighting.

The Russians, meanwhile, work from that old right tenet. Some things, like fighting land wars on their border, are too important to be subjected to the marketplace. There is competition within the Russian military industrial base, but the winners are not picked by the invisible hand of the marketplace. They are picked by the demands of the military for the situations they are facing. One reason Russian arms tend to be simple compared to American arms, is the military doctrine of the Russians.

It is tempting to think this old right idea applies only to something narrow like war fighting, but war fighting is a consequence of other factors. After the Cold War, the Russians did not embark on a process to ship their manufacturing base to low-cost countries as happened in the West. One reason for that is the Russians do not make profit the singular goal of their society. They set about modernizing their manufacturing base and now they are reaping the rewards.

This is a pattern we see all over the West. Open borders, like slavery in the ancient world, are profitable for society, but it erodes the social capital. It attacks the customs and habits of the people, the things that bind them together as a people. Once you have monetized the social capital of the people and carried it off to vaults in New York, it is no longer available when the crisis comes. It turns out that national borders should not be subject to the crucible of reason.

The crisis surrounding Ukraine, and make no mistake that crisis is spilling over into the West now, is a microcosm for what awaits the West. The reason for that is Western managerial elites turned their societies into for-profit enterprises. The decision point in every matter is whether it profits the managerial elite. Even the abrogation of ancient rights is merely a defense of the bottom line. It turns out that when everything has a price, nothing has value, not even your society.


If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!


Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory, so if you are a griller, take you spice business to one of our guys.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.


Following Orders

I was up before the sun today so I could head out to the new house and avoid sitting in a traffic jam for hours. In the Baltimore – Washington area, traffic starts around seven in certain areas and is a mess everywhere by eight. The same people who tell us they know why Gaia is angry with us also designed the road system that results in millions of cars idling for hours every day, making Gaia angry. Regardless, I avoided being one of those cars be getting outside the wire by six this morning.

An hour into the drive, a sedan came up behind me so I moved over to the travel lane to let him pass. I was probably doing eighty but he wanted to go faster. The road is straight and wide so you can drive as fast as you like for the most part. The only real hazard is the dumb people who camp out in the hammer lane doing the posted speed limit, which is a well-known problem in these parts. These rolling roadblocks are the result of extensive use of lead paint in Baltimore.

A few miles down the road I see that car pulled over by a state trooper, no doubt getting a ticket for speeding. The maps app on my phone warned of a speed trap, but presumably that guy does not use that app. That driver will now get a big fine and spend the next three years paying higher insurance premiums, because the duty officer assign Barny Fife to traffic duty today. He did this because they have quotas to meet every month, despite their claims to the contrary.

If the driver bothered to ask the state trooper why he is pulling people over for speeding on a quiet stretch of highway, the trooper would probably say it is not safe to exceed the posted speed limit. He would say this knowing it is a lie, but that is what he says because it is what allows him to think the job has a purpose beyond raising revenue for the government and providing him with an income. A big part of policing is convincing the cops that they stand between civilization and anarchy.

If the driver called bullshit on it, the trooper would fall back on the line every cop learns after a few weeks on the job. He is just doing his job. This is the most factually true thing any cop ever says in any setting. That trooper is told to write tickets and he knows how many he needs to write before he can finish his shift. If the trooper wants to keep his job, he does what he is told and never questions it. If he is told to randomly shoot people on the highway, he is going to do it.

This is not to pick on the police. They are just the most egregious example of the “I’m just following orders” mentality of this age. If you want to keep your job at Mega Corp, you better not be the first guy to stop cheering at the pep rally. Do not let the boss hear you making sport of his new initiatives. Much of what people do is what they feel they have to do in order to avoid negative consequences. To some degree, everyone is just following orders, because that is the least bad option.

This is much more novel than it seems. Not that long ago the line, “I am just following orders” had very negative connotations. The “Nuremberg defense” was treated as worse than the alleged crime. The argument was that if you follow immoral orders then you are worse than someone who thinks the orders were moral. The latter could be rehabilitated, while the former is someone without scruples and therefore can never be trusted to do the right thing.

We no longer hear anyone condemn the Nuremberg defense. In fact, it has been flipped on its head now. When the cops beat up people exercising their rights in order to defend Antifa rioters, the so-called conservatives rush in to remind us that the real victims are the cops who are just following orders. The people in charge, the people we call the left, love the idea of people following orders. They really love seeing the cops unquestioningly following orders.

It is one of life’s many ironies that in this age where everyone is supposed to search their heart every day for fascism, we can gain some insight into why the German people went along with the Nazi program. In the total state, survival depends upon not questioning the system. If you can put yourself in jeopardy by questioning the orders, then naturally you will take care to never be suspected of questioning the orders, which means enthusiastically following orders.

For those who get the sads when the Nazis are cast in a negative light, the same dynamic came to dominate communist Russia. This set in before Stalin decided he needed to purge the people who might not follow orders. The Bolsheviks, like the fascists after them, figured out that you cannot get to the promised land if you are endlessly explaining yourself to the people who refuse to follow the rules, so the expedient solution was to remove those people.

Anarcho-tyranny is a feature of managerialism, not a bug, because it is what is necessary for managerialism to survive. The people at the top of the system must remain at the top of the system and the only way to ensure that is to make sure everyone is following their orders. The stated goals of the system are a means to an end and the end is to perpetuate the system. The reason you must follow orders may change, but you must always follow orders.

Eventually this advances to the point where the system becomes so conservative and brittle it is unable to adapt. We cannot know how fascism would have ended, but we saw how communism ended. In its final days it was old men desperately trying to hold onto power by enforcing rules that no longer made sense. Once people stopped following orders, the whole thing collapsed. It is something to think about the next time you are pulled over for speeding on a lonely highway.


If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!


Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory, so if you are a griller, take you spice business to one of our guys.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.


Killer Drones

Note: For those looking for a good book to read, check out this new novel Faction: With the Crusaders, which is the follow on of the writer’s first novel called Faction.


If you were alive a thousand years ago and decided you wanted to kill the local prince, it meant getting within reach of the prince. You would have to get close enough to stab him with a knife or poison his food. That meant getting past the guards and his retainers who were always with him. For anyone but those with regular access to the prince this was near impossible, which is why political assassinations were almost always a part of palace intrigue or a palace coup.

Ranged weapons changed this math a bit, but the bow was around a thousand years ago and was not a weapon for this type of activity. The reason is bows were primarily for hunting at close range or part of a system for war. The hunter would need to get close to his quarry as bows were not terribly accurate. In war, masses of archers operated a lot like a missile battery. They would fill the sky with arrows using volume to overcome the limited accuracy of the weapon.

The first real innovation in weapons that could be used for assassinations was the crossbow which arrived in the Middle Ages. We know the ancients had crossbows and used them in war, but they were not terribly accurate. The cost made them a weapon of war rather than a tool for private use. The crossbow disappeared from Europe for almost a thousand years, but then reappeared in the tenth century. Technology soon made them cheap and deadly accurate in the right hands.

This is why medieval leaders grew concerned with this weapon and tried to ban their private ownership in some cases. A weapon that a peasant could own and master that would allow him to strike the prince from a distance created a new problem for the ruling class of the time. A couple of angry peasants on the roof tops or even in the crowd could kill the prince. All of a sudden, having guards and a retinue was not enough, so the prince had to be more careful around the peasants.

Of course, we see the same thing happen with firearms. In the 18th century it was not a great weapon for assassinations. If you could get close enough you could kill the prince with a muzzle loader, but you would also be easy to spot. The first widely available firearms were not great for up close work. Pistols started to change this, and technology soon made it possible to conceal a deadly weapon on your person, thus making the assassin a real threat to authority.

Even though the problem was obvious, it took a while for rulers to figure out how to deal with firearms as political weapons. The same is true for things like roadside bombs and bombs delivered through the mail. A hundred years ago anarchists sent bombs to rich people through the mail. Of course, political actors were able to assassinate important people with the use of commonly available firearms. This is no longer an issue, as the ruling class has adapted to this threat.

This may be about to change. The use of FPV drones in the Ukraine war is doing to range weapons what war did for prior weapons. The FPV drone is a First Person Video drone that an operator uses to put an explosive on a target. The drone has a camera so the operator can look through that camera to guide the drone to the target where it explodes upon impact. Two years ago, these did not exist as a practical matter, but now the battlefield is littered with them.

The reason the skies are full of drones in Ukraine is they are cheap to produce and cheap to master. A team of two can become a highly effective weapon on the battlefield with a week of training on the drone. Training men to use million dollars tanks and artillery takes years. The drone is not a replacement for these weapon systems, but they are proving to be a cheap way to increase the combat effectiveness of troops that have the minimum amount of training.

A big part of the drone war is that the soldiers are learning to operate them and also repair them when needed. After the war, millions of men will go back to civilian life knowing how to make a cheap flying bomb they can guide to a target. Tens of thousands of Ukrainian men will come home angry at their politicians or the politicians of Europe about their conduct of the war. In other words, you do not have to be a genius to see the potential downstream consequences of the drone revolution.

For the last fifty years, the West has had to deal with terror attacks, which meant bombs, mass shootings and hijackings. Western elites had largely insulated themselves from assassination, so the only political violence was attacks on civilians. Now that is about to change as the terrorist can fly a bomb through the window of a rich person’s home or into the limousine of an important person. The math of political violence is about to change due to the drone.

History tells us that no one will notice this until a lunatic flies his homemade FPV drone into a government building. Then the security industrial complex will get the money to unriddle the problem. The battlefield will provide a lesson here as well because those soldiers using drones are working on defending against them. Reports suggest the Russians are way ahead on this, but it will not take long before the private sector in the West is working the problem of killer drones.

In the middle of the last century, it was still common to see politicians mixing it up with the people, but that no longer happens. Over time the threat of political violence, despite the rarity, has put the political class behind a wall. Drones will probably put them in a bunker, but it will also put the managerial elite in bunkers too. They will cease to be real people and instead be nothing more than images on our screens. The FPV drone cannot hunt what it cannot see in the wild.

It will also mean new rules to monitor the sale of components used to make drones, like we see with explosives and street drugs. You cannot go into a store and buy certain cold medicines without a note from the state. It will not be long before you must pass a background check to buy a drone. We may even see politicians try to ban assault drones on the grounds that they are weapons of war. It sounds ridiculous, but our rulers think this is a good ad, so nothing is too farfetched.

This thought experiment is a good reminder that war has downstream consequences that no one can foresee. Cheap crossbows were great for waging war, but lots of good crossbowmen in the crowd were not good for the king. The same proved true for other weapons of war. We are about to see the same thing with this war. In the fullness of time, it will be seen as an inflection point and maybe one that makes the economics of the Western ruling system unworkable.


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